ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

I want to jot down my feeling after reading “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini.  The intensity of the book is so high that I dreaded reading it for its heaviness and depressiveness.  It sucked away every ounce of my breath, leaving me drowning and clutching for a straw.  What it described is mind boggling.  I usually don’t like reading novels like this as there is already too much stress in my life to bring on something that is so upsetting.  Some of the story lines were pretty excruciating to read on.  It is not easy to finish the book without having an array of emotions.  The part about Sohrab is especially saddening.  I was flooded with emotions at the bathroom scene.  The words “For you, a thousand times over” overpowered all my senses.  This feeling I got, similar to that I had while reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, is just as disturbing as it is unbearable.  However, I wouldn’t say that this book is comparable to “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and I wouldn’t say that I would recommend reading this book.

From literature standpoint, one would argue that there is not much of a literary value in this book for its plotting too schematic and transparently contrived.  The writing style is full of repetitions with as many clichés and as much foreshadowing as is humanly possible, which overshadows the compelling layers of metaphor.  The story was told in simple brush strokes, void of fancy verbiage and brilliant phrases.  

This is a novel about humanity, friendship, honor, betrayal, loyalty, acceptance, redemption, social stigma and bravery.    

Anyway, that is all I have to say.  I don’t like to give out too much detail of the book because that spoils everything.  Read at your own risk if your stomach can take it.  I do think that it is not a bad book; however, the story is too troublesome for me to digest.